China: Conundrums, Constructions and Cities

Resumen

China´s construction circus has drawn a lot of attention throughout the past decade. The urban evolution has been followed as an enigma, a nightmare, a self-fulfilling prophecy a logical outcome and/or an inevitable victim of globalization and iconography. The tipping point of the debate was the “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision Data Tables and Highlights”-report published in 2003 by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs [Population Division] of the United Nations. Since then, everybody cites the urban/rural 50/50 divide and uses it as perverse pretext to take any decision. The report features a list of 118 Chinese cities, whose population will exceed one million inhabitants by 2015. MovingCities demystifies the generic aura that mummifies the image of China’s cities: that they all look more or less the same.